Thin threads are reaching out to my hands, As if on stage I would stumble without them... Hey there, up there, you let me go, I can manage without invisible threads...
A. Zhigarev, S. Alikhanov “The Doll’s Song”
Hello, Habr! I am very glad that my strange articles, which I have combined under the title “New Starting Point,” are interesting for someone to read. And I want to say thank you for that. Before this, I reasoned based on some famous films, but sometimes I want to think in free flight.
I noticed that more and more often articles of a psychological and psychopharmacological orientation began to appear, which emanate scientifically proven hopelessness. Either directly or between the lines it is implied that there is no free will, and we are slaves to our instincts, the biochemistry of the brain and the body as a whole. Various pictures are drawn - much like on the KDPV.
I want to share my thoughts in defense of free will. Let me emphasize that this is not a criticism of the scientific paradigm. Quite the contrary - this is an attempt to look at freedom from a scientific point of view. I understand that I’m starting from a disadvantageous, and maybe even obviously losing, position, but I’ll try to make a couple of castlings and somehow build a line of defense. If you like to discuss the undiscussable and prove the unprovable among friends over a mug of a pleasant drink, then I ask under the cat.
The most important question
The issue of free will is a cornerstone issue of philosophy and worldview, on which the lives and destinies of people ultimately depend.
When you start talking about free will, most people look at you like you're an idiot. Half of the people do this because they don’t quite understand what they’re talking about. The other half comes from being understood too well. In order to be clear to the first half and lull the vigilance of the second, we will formulate this question in the most harmless form, which nevertheless retains all the severity of the problem. So:
Can we influence our future?
There is nothing seditious in this question. Any sane person should try to answer it before doing anything in his life. At least for myself. Even if this means making a shaman’s drum from the upholstery of your office chair. And go to the tundra to dance around the fire and drink fly agaric tincture.
Level of awareness of the consequences of your decisions
According to the Laws of the Universe, our task as parents is to create favorable living conditions for our children. Not only for sons and daughters , but also for the second and third generations ahead, at least. Most of the many will perceive my information in their own way. And this majority will come to the following conclusions about benefits:
- monetary wealth,
- provision of real estate,
- by car.
As a rule, the list is meager and ends with material things. However, if in the process of becoming your child receives all this, then, as a rule, he will be deprived of other lessons. Usually, material accumulation and consumerism give birth to absolutely weak-willed and controllable biorobots . It turns out that the parents and the external environment did not educate them enough.
The lack of free will is passed on to the next generation. The apple never falls far from the tree. It is worth enormous efforts and painful blows from life to change your surrounding world. Not many people manage to achieve positive results. It would be more correct to say that only a few out of a thousand.
Why prove the obvious?
If we take me, for example, then I don’t need evidence of free will.
I feel it like the five fingers of my hand. Sometimes I look at my hand, move each finger individually, and then make a fist. When my hand obediently carries out my orders, I understand that I am still able to change something in this world. And let them tell me that this is a phantom feeling, like from an amputated limb. I know that I have freedom, just as I know that I have thoughts and emotions. Remember the story of how the wise men gathered and began to prove to each other that motion does not exist (Zeno’s famous paradox). One sage, outraged by these conclusions, stood up and demonstratively walked back and forth, and then left the hall altogether.
I think that this sage, if they began to convince him that he had no freedom, would simply bloody someone’s nose. I remember a joke.
At the trial, a woman is asked: “Why did you hit your husband with a frying pan?” - Why does he tell everyone that I’m so predictable?
But what is obvious to some may not be obvious to others. Moreover, for others, something completely different may be obvious. And even if the same thing is obvious to everyone, it never hurts to talk about it, using various arguments of varying degrees of scientificity and emotionality.
The paradox of psychology
Here we can again turn to Schopenhauer, since he expressed the essence of the psychological paradox that deprives us of free will clearly and clearly. His logic is simple and impenetrable - let’s say a person is able to make a choice between two “I want” at his own discretion, BUT is a person able to choose what he wants?
See how simple it is? Even if we admit the existence of freedom of choice, we are still faced with an insurmountable limitation - the lack of any control over our preferences and desires. We are in no way able to choose what to want or not to want - all motivation lies outside the boundaries of consciousness, which claims to have freedom of its own will.
An example of the topic of the day is the presidential election. You may well decide to go or not to go to the polls, but let’s assume that you finally got ready and went. You can easily take the voting form and choose the booth in which you will fill it out. Okay, we've chosen. And finally, you can select the name of the candidate from the list of those proposed and put a sign of your democratic free will in the desired box - a tick. Looks natural.
But how is this choice made? Depending on your priorities, you choose based on your principles, your logic, your instincts, your emotional civil protest or the headache from yesterday’s adventures - and you feel in this the realization of your own freedom. But where do your principles come from? Why is logic important to you? Why do you trust your intuition? Where do your emotions come from? And why does a headache incline you to one choice and not another? Did you choose your character or did it somehow form on its own?
Decoding for the rebus: “I don’t know” five times and “I didn’t choose” once.
It turns out that even if we have freedom of choice, it does not change anything - each choice is predetermined by the complex backstory of our life and is completely unpredictable in each specific situation. We can convince ourselves and those around us that we clearly know why we commit this or that action, but a few questions will be enough to clearly discover that we do not know the reasons for our own choice, but are only adjusting the fait accompli to explanations that are favorable to us.
The belief in consistency and constancy of character that our friends, colleagues and relatives so rely on is nothing more than a matter of statistics. For some unknown reason, most of us follow more or less constant development vectors over long periods of time. But like any statistical sequence, the chain of predictable reactions can break at any moment.
It’s not my fault, it just came...
First, I’ll try to understand a little about the humanitarian side of the issue.
I understand that the following reflections will not add or subtract anything in terms of a scientific approach to free will, but I will still speculate about it. If the meaning of free will for the exact sciences can still be somehow disputed, then for the humanitarian branches of knowledge, free will generally constitutes their entire content. This is especially true for the theory of society and law.
Let's assume that scientists would reveal all the true physiological causes of human behavior. What would a trial look like in this case?
Defendant, tell me, why did you steal a wallet with money from a passerby? “It’s not my fault, Your Honor, I was afraid that I would remain hungry.” You know, hunger is a basic human instinct. — Were you hungry at that moment? - No, but I had a fear of future hunger. This was developed as a result of evolution. Here is a study where this is written in detail. - Well, okay, why did you beat him up after that? - Well, you understand, I didn’t like his face. The tribal slot system worked. He seemed like an enemy to me. There is also one completely reliable study about this. - Why did you hit him with a knife? - This is post-motor aggression. The adrenaline level jumped. Cortisol again. Here is a certificate from my endocrinologist. - Why did you hit him with a knife again (a total of nine times)? - Well, it’s quite simple, Your Honor. This is simply a motor reflex, with a positive feedback loop. Pavlov also wrote about this. It's a shame not to know in your position.
If you think this is absurd, then you are mistaken. There are already known cases of acquittals for diabetics who carried out illegal actions when their sugar levels were low. It is with these facts that the famous researcher of the biochemistry of monkeys and humans, Robert Sapolsky, often begins his lectures.
Neurobiological explanation
G. Frankfurt and D. Dennett suggest that free will and determinism can be compatible (the so-called concept of compatibilism ). Frankfurt argues that during an intrapersonal conflict, a person experiences equal desires - to perform / not to perform an action [6]. From a neurobiological point of view, at this moment there is a conflict between the pleasure center and inhibitory control. Dennett developed the idea of the evolutionary development of free will and decision making (for example, through altruism, the desire to help others).
H. Fuster proposed a cyclical model of decision making [7], according to which action and the decision to act can begin and end at any stage of the perception-action cycle. Here, free will is born as a result of the relationship between the brain and the surrounding world (more precisely, ideas about this world stored in the cerebral cortex). Fuster believed that such a complex system as the brain develops due to its plasticity and adaptability. In the course of adaptation to new conditions, new functions appear - and, accordingly, freedom of knowledge.
However, we should not assume that free will resides only in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Fuster called it only a “neuromediator” in the more complex relationship between the inner and outer world.
Another point of view on free will is multi-determinism . According to this theory, the more motives there are, the fewer restrictions there are on free will. At the other pole here is reductionism, which searches for only one, the most important motive for action. However, as neuropsychologist R. Sperry said: “Trying to crack the biomolecular code of cognitive processes is like deciphering a note by studying the chemical composition of ink.”
So, free will from a neurobiological point of view is the freedom to exchange information in the cerebral cortex. From the point of view of cognitive science, it is the result of the functioning of the nervous system, taking into account the influence of the conscious and unconscious components on decisions. At the same time, the concept of free will is still not defined - especially in the context of a changing scientific paradigm and a multidisciplinary approach. Psychology can predict a person's choices; Cognitive neuroscience suggests neural patterns for learning to make decisions. Hebb's rule represents an "associative" view of learning and free will. After creating a neural network for the decision-making system, it became clear that a developed network would be able to predict choices that we considered arbitrary.
How will the problem of free will be solved when more and more disciplines study it comprehensively? So far this question remains unanswered.
Why is free will denied?
In my opinion, the main reason for the denial of free will is man’s desire to build a predictable world around himself.
And science is the main tool. Science studies cause-and-effect relationships and helps design safe and understandable environments. But the important thing here is that a correctly constructed predictable reality should give a person the right to choose, the right to realize his freedom. Science must come up with a switch that turns the light on and off predictably. But the decision itself - to turn the light on or off - should remain with the person.
To be more specific, I believe that the reason for denying free will is the desire of science to build a comprehensive, predictable picture of the world. This desire is due to the main task of science. But how far can deterministic methodology be applied in studying the world, and especially man?
If you have a hammer in your hands, you see nails everywhere. But maybe it’s not worth driving a nail into a person’s head?
Supreme power
In any case, it turns out that in comparison with the “higher will” the human will is negligible and generally erroneous. That is why all world religions, either explicitly or implicitly, include the idea of “primordial guilt,” which anyone who does not follow the “higher will” must feel.
The merit of religion is that within its framework the first psychotechniques emerged related to overcoming/reducing the intensity of feelings of guilt (confession, repentance, etc.). Religion is guilty of something else - the legitimization of numerous “conductors of the highest will,” and, first of all, worldly power. Any ruler was declared “God’s anointed.” And everyone who questioned the decisions and actions of the ruler had to feel guilty.
Guilt towards those “entitled” lies at the heart of social conformity. The more totalitarian a society is, the more authoritarian its leader is, the more infallible its decisions are considered.
All others are obliged to implement these decisions unquestioningly. “I take full responsibility!” – this phrase often uttered by “leaders” in front of their followers can be understood as: “Don’t think! Give up your own conscious choice! Carry out only my will!”
A mechanism for delegating responsibility and guilt is literally “sewn into” the formed totalitarian consciousness. Both in a positive sense (“Let those at the top decide, they know best there”), and in a negative sense (as the desire to look for and find someone to blame for “everything bad” next to oneself, but not in oneself).
Free will is the foundation of science
I will try to show that the concept of free will is fundamentally present in science.
As an example, I will take mathematics, which, as is known, is the queen of sciences. One of the basic concepts of mathematics is function. As you know, a function has independent, or free, variables. The name itself suggests the right thoughts. This means that some free will can arbitrarily assign values to these variables, and mathematics must obediently specify the value of the function.
It is also interesting to define a limit - the basis of mathematical analysis. There are even supposed to be several beings with free will. One creature chooses the “predetermined value”, and the other creature chooses the “value of the argument at which”.
The principle of my reasoning, I think, is clear. We choose terms that have the words independent, free in their definitions, and try to understand what this term means in the light of the presence of free will. For example, “degree of freedom” in mathematics and mechanics. You can find many other examples.
As you know, in order to have correct judgments, you need to call things by their proper names. Mathematics and physics are precisely those sciences where everything is called by its proper name. And if there are concepts of independent variables and degrees of freedom, then that is what they are.
Psychological morality
The most serious and profound reflections leave the question of free will open. Even if all the evidence is against it, we still have a very clear subjective experience of freedom of choice. And if you look at the inner meaning of all such philosophical exercises, then their goal is not at all to deprive a person of will and responsibility. By the way, can you guess what the goal is?
Be that as it may, even if we are deprived of any ability to make voluntary choice, this does not relieve us of responsibility for everything that happens to us. It doesn’t matter whether God’s will or blind chance guides our actions, subjectively, from the inside, there is only one way to look at what is happening and not make a mess - to see in everything the universal inevitability, one’s own free will and total personal responsibility, at the same time.
Do you still value your individuality?
Preparation of the material took 8 hours. The following books were used in the work on the article: Arthur Schopenhauer - “Free Will and Morality”, Manly P. Hall - “Encyclopedic Exposition of Masonic, Hermetic, Kabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolic Philosophy”, Carl Gustav Jung “Man and His Symbols” and some others.
The old postulate trick has never failed
Of course, the most basic question is where freedom can come from and what physical laws determine its existence.
When science cannot explain some facts, it takes them as axioms. If you think that this is some kind of cheating trick, then you are mistaken. This is common scientific practice. For example, Einstein managed to pull off this trick even twice: in the special theory of relativity, he accepted as a postulate the completely inexplicable constancy of the speed of light. In the general theory of relativity - the equality of gravitational and inertial masses, which was also an inexplicable, but precisely established scientific fact.
Likewise, we must postulate that the mass and energy in our universe can exhibit freedom. And some of her behavior cannot be explained by cause-and-effect relationships. Science should not ignore free will. It must include it in its conceptual and methodological apparatus.
In the light of this idea, the correct question (I already mentioned this in another article) is not how freedom arises as a result of physical laws, but how physical laws limit the absolute freedom that is initially inherent in us.
The paradox of religion
Any religious dispute, by definition, is a sandbox game. The basic scripture defines the basic tenets and conditions of the game, and then a debate begins about the interpretation of the basic concepts and their logical consequences. But the conversation never goes beyond the sandbox, which means it inevitably remains a dispute about words, not about the truth. And, nevertheless, some theological constructions are quite interesting and indicative of our conversation.
It will be easier for us, as representatives of Christian culture, to talk about biblical teaching, although the same logic can be applied to any other religion.
Take, for example, the postulated omnipotence of God. Can God create a stone so heavy that he himself cannot lift it? - This is a well-known paradox that can be extended to the problem of free will. Can God give a person such freedom of choice that he will be able to act contrary to God? Or will such freedom still be within the limits of what is permitted? But then it's just a longer chain, not freedom, right?
Or let's go from the other side. From the point of view of biblical teaching, the salvation of the soul is the ultimate goal of the Christian faith. It's simple. It is enough to surrender yourself to God’s will, trust it, and then everything will happen as if by itself. But such an attitude raises a lot of questions.
If I have to place myself in God's hands, it means that I am currently outside of God's control. That is, either I, in my unenlightened state, am not subject to God, or my life has never gone beyond the bounds of God’s will, and, therefore, the salvation of my soul is guaranteed to me regardless of whether I follow the Christian commandments. Such is the confusion.
You can also ask this question: can I voluntarily renounce my own will?
That is, can I put myself into God’s hands? The theologian will say that submission to God's will occurs due to the "grace of God", but if this is so, it turns out that the will available to me is limited by divine arbitrariness and can be taken away at any moment by the "grace of God"? Confusion again.
In fairness, it must be said that with religion not everything is so simple. All of these paradoxes are the fate and result of applying verbal logic to what should be considered symbolically. But within the framework of religion, as a social institution, everything is usually interpreted precisely at the level of words, signs and dogmas, and therefore does not withstand elementary criticism. And in order to look behind the symbolic veil, let's move on to the last point - the esoteric component of any religion.
Second dialectical barrier
When they talk about dialectics, they usually cite the following related concepts: hot-cold, heavy-light, good-evil.
But in my opinion, these are weak dialectical pairs. There are stronger dialectical concepts. They cannot be mixed as easily as water in a gang. And the transition between them is not so easy. And I would call them dialectical barriers. As examples: form and content, strategy and tactics, matter and consciousness, information and energy, and, of course, predictability and freedom.
Let’s take a closer look at the pair – information and energy. It is quite obvious that one cannot exist without the other. Any information has an energy carrier. Any energy carries some information. Despite the complexity and elusiveness of this relationship, humanity has overcome this barrier. And now we can design devices that combine energy and information in any proportions we need.
The concepts of determinism and freedom belong to the same dialectical barrier. Someday we will overcome this too. And we will design devices that combine predictability and freedom in the form and in those relationships that will be useful to us. And then artificial intelligence will become really strong.
All research leads to neurobiology
And this is not surprising. “Not philosophy, not physical determinism—only neuroscience can put an end to the free will debate,” writes neuroscientist W. R. Klemm in his book The Scientific Foundation of Consciousness and Free Will. Klemm argues that some human behavioral characteristics can only be explained by free will, which is the result of processes occurring in the brain [3].
Dr. Eric Racine, in continuation of the theory, proposed the dynamic concept of free will [4]. It stems from recent research in cognitive science and social psychology that has conceptualized free will as a psychological phenomenon with unusual dynamic and intrinsic properties. Dynamic properties reflect changes in response to internal (physiological) and external (physical and social) stimuli. The study suggests that free will is not static, but is influenced by psychological needs and external factors. Thus, dynamic changes in free will will have consequences: oppressed will will lead to disappointment, while a strong will will shape socially responsible behavior and business success.
As R. Baumeister wrote: “The relationship between consciousness and behavior... is empirically provable. However, the influence of the conscious is often indirect and delayed and largely depends on unconscious processes.”
Light of freedom
There is a story about the inventor of a perpetual motion machine.
When he was told that eternal motion was impossible, he replied: “My eyes tell me the opposite - everything in the universe is involved in eternal causeless motion.” I get the same feeling when I try to think about free will. Everything in the universe is imbued with the spirit of freedom. This feeling arises, for example, when I try to make sense of the strange world of quantum physics and elementary particles.
For example, a particle of light is a photon. In his behavior he shows incredible ingenuity and freedom. It moves towards the goal simultaneously along all possible trajectories. He interacts with whoever he wants, when he wants. He strongly resists any attempts at observation. He is constantly in a superposition with respect to any characteristics. He postpones all his quantum decisions for as long as possible.
We act almost exactly like a photon. When solving a problem, we consider all options. We put off all our decisions until the very last moment. We don't like it when someone sticks their nose and measuring instruments into our affairs. We do not want and cannot make up our minds, and we are in a superposition regarding almost all important issues.
We are made of light. And just as free. We just have a little more restrictions.
Experiments
In 2007, Berlin neurologist J.D. Haynes found using MRI that he could determine with a 60% probability which of two buttons a subject would press. The scientist determined this 6 seconds before realizing the desire to press the button and 7 seconds before the actual action.
Neurologist Itzhak Fried also conducted an experiment [5], but with the participation of patients with epilepsy. The scientist found that 1.5 seconds before making a decision, individual neurons in a certain area of the brain are activated in the subjects. According to Fried, some predetermined ideas are simply accepted by our consciousness. Thus, the conscious can be considered as one of the later stages of choice.
Moral responsibility
In general, society holds people responsible for their actions, and can praise or blame them for what they do. However, there is an opinion that moral responsibility requires free will. Thus, another important aspect of the free will debate is whether individuals should be morally responsible for their actions and, if so, in what sense.
Incompatibilists generally hold that determinism is inimical to moral responsibility. It seems impossible that man is responsible for his actions, which can be foreseen (in principle) since the beginning of time. Hard determinists say, “So much the worse for free will,” rejecting this notion. Appealing to such ideas of hard determinism, Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer, argued for the virginity of clients Leopold and Loeb. Making his final speech, he declared:
What is this guy's fault? He was not his own father, he was not his own mother, he was not his own grandparents. All this just fell into place for him. He did not surround himself with governesses and wealth. He didn't make himself. And yet he is forced to pay.
In contrast, libertarians say “So much the worse for determinism.” Daniel Denet asks why one cares about being responsible, and speculates that the idea of moral responsibility may be "just a metaphysical whine." Sartre makes the argument that people sometimes avoid blame and responsibility by hiding behind determinism: “.. we are always ready to hide behind a belief in determinism if this freedom weighs on us when we need an excuse.” However, it is still a fair position to take such people as “low” or “dishonest”.
The question of moral responsibility lies at the very center of the debate between hard determinists and compatibilists. Hard determinists are forced to admit that individuals often have “free will” in the compatibilist sense, but they deny that such a sense of free will can serve as a basis for moral responsibility. The fact that the subject's choice of action is not imposed on him does not change the fact that determinism relieves him of responsibility.
Compatibilists deny, on the contrary, that determinism is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. Society cannot hold someone responsible unless their actions were something specific. This argument can be traced back to Hume's David. If indeterminism is true, then events that are not determined by anything are random. It is doubtful whether one can reward or condemn someone for actions spontaneously generated by his nervous system. Quite the contrary, it is necessary to show how the actions were the result of the desires and preferences of the subject, the character of the person, before making her morally responsible for her actions. Libertarians might respond that indeterminate events are not random at all, but are the result of a substantive will whose decisions are not determined in advance. Compatibilists find this argument unsatisfactory because it only pushes the problem back a step. Moreover, he refers to some kind of mystical metaphysics, as in the idea of ex nihilo nihil fit. Libertarians respond by trying to clarify how a non-determined will can be bound to a captive subject.
St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, discusses issues of morality and responsibility this way: “Has not the potter power over the clay, that out of the same mixture he may make one vessel for that which is honorable, and another for that which is base?” From this point of view, a person can be disgraced by his actions, although these actions in the most general sense were completely determined by God.
A similar approach holds that the basis of a person's moral responsibility is his character. That is, a person with the character of a murderer cannot help but kill, but still must be punished, because it is fair to punish those who have a bad character. How this character was formed is insignificant in this approach. Thus, Robert Kamins, and others after him, argue that people should be judged not by their actions, but by the extent to which these actions “reveal their character.” If character, however it is meant, is the reason that determines a person's choices, and if a person's choices are immoral, then the person must respond no matter what her genes are or other factors of that kind.
The only exception to the rule that moral guilt is determined either by character traits or by conscious acts occurs in the case of the insanity defense.
Humans' proven lack of free will challenges liberal ideology
It is not clear why Libet used the concepts of “will”, “motivation” and “desire” so freely; it is unlikely that he did not distinguish between them. Most likely, he had a somewhat one-sided view of the problem of will, without delving into philosophy.
Disputes about the discovery continued for a long time, but, undoubtedly, the role of Libet’s experiment was very significant: it drew attention to the problem of consciousness and aroused interest, prompting further research. He also had followers who repeated the experiment on more modern equipment many years later - first of all, D. Heines, professor at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig.
Some public figures believe that the scientifically proven lack of free will in humans poses a challenge to liberal ideology. Others are happy that we still have freedom, but not enough - only about 200 milliseconds! The experience of studying people who practice meditation is also encouraging. And yet, the scientist managed to greatly tickle the nerves of all humanity: some people are still afraid that they will find themselves controlled by biorobots.
